When the popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia overthrew the public faces of the imperial-backed regimes in the region, it inspired supporters of popular democracy worldwide. However, as the Arab revolt spread from North Africa to the Gulf and deepened its demands, the Empire struck back…
The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) said Monday the death of Colonel Muammar Abu Al Gaddafi marks the end of a painful and tumultuous chapter for the people of Libya who have endured a protracted conflict in that country over the past eight months…
The savage killing Thursday of deposed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi served to underscore the criminal character of the war that has been prosecuted by the US and NATO over the past eight months. The assassination follows NATO’s more than month-long siege of Sirte, (which left) virtually every building smashed, with untold numbers of civilians dead, wounded and stricken by disease, as they were deprived of food, water, medical care and other basic necessities…
Gaddafi’s killing – with all the hallmarks of a ‘coordinated assassination’ – marks ‘one more episode in this NATO war in Libya and North Africa’, writes Horace Campbell. The ‘remilitarisation of Africa and new deployment of Africom is a new stage of African politics,’ says Campbell…
The Foreign Ministers of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, meeting in Caracas, Venezuela on 9 September 2011, recalling the Special Communiqué of the Political Council on 4 March 2011 and the Special Communiqué of the Ministerial Social Council on 19 March 2011, condemns the NATO intervention in Libya and its illegal military aggression, carried out under the cover of a UN Security Council resolution, opportunistically exploiting the situation of the internal political conflict in that country..
The revolution in Libya, led by a motley group of democrats and Islamists and their imperialist allies, is likely to entrench the deep divisions in the country, writes Samir Amin, warning of the possibility of disintegration of the nation.
Following her experience of being on the ground in Tripoli, Lizzie Phelan writes of the Western media’s alarming ability ‘to not just fabricate events but to create’.
Gaddafi’s fall points to more Western interventions to come in Africa, writes Mahmood Mamdani.
The recent Paris meet was a grim victory celebration by the NATO powers who wanted non-European poodles on the bandwagon, writes M.K. Bhadrakumar.
Though we might see events in Libya as a sort of twisted fantasy tale, their effects will be all too real for the country and Africa at large, writes Nicholas H. Tucker.
The NATO military campaign in Libya is a pointed example of imperialism as the last stage of capitalism, Amy Niang argues. It is a travesty of international law, whose goal is conquest of economic resources.
Dibussi Tande captures the reaction to the fall of Gaddafi in this week’s round-up of the African blogosphere.
Jane Franklin writes:
I’m sending this September 5 front-page New York Times article, with pictures as best possible. NATO continues bombing “military” targets in “holdout” cities. How could it be clearer that NATO is not protecting the civilians of Libya? This is stark terror.
Art Heitzer writes:
Note: Jane Franklin specifically referenced that “The horrible tension … is palpable” in the photo which is slide no. 2 of 13, on line, and described in the 2nd last paragraph. The full article is http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/05/world/africa/05migrants.html?pagewanted=all (which also contains the link for the slide-show).
To see this incredible slide-show directly, click on: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/09/05/world/africa/20110905_MIGRANTS_GOBIG.html?ref=africa#1
On today, the anniversary of the overthrow of King Idris in Libya, the neo-colonial powers met in France to continue their drive at the new carve-up of Africa…
Libya: Cynical Imperialism South Journal
How the West cooked up the “People’s Uprising” Russ Baker
The new Libya Patrick Cockburn
Libya’s revolution disgraced by racism Richard Seymour
Massacre of Black people by “democratic rebels’–accounts of the victims Michel Collon
Libya’s rebels are a front patched together from groups of varying interests and ideologies, they were disorganized, undisciplined, and untrained for battle when they first attacked an army base and a police station. By themselves, they could have perhaps achieved negotiations and reforms, but they could not have overthrown the government….
When the US and NATO “liberate” Libya – who then liberates Libya from the US and NATO? The attacks on Libya are no more or less than criminal – and I do not use the word lightly, but literally mean it for good reason. UN Resolution 1973 does not anywhere in it permit:-
• Support of a faction within Libya to overthrow the government
• Arming of a faction within Libya to overthrow the government
• Bombing in support of a faction within Libya to overthrow the government
As a professor and an influential voice on the internet, I am appealing to you to stop supporting, be it implicitly or explicitly, the criminal bombardment of the Libyan people by the US/NATO attacks…
Mervyn Claxton argues that “Uninformed internet readers who closely followed the “debate” on the Libyan conflict, on this website, in the hope of gaining some understanding of the nature of that very complex issue, and what is at stake in the various possible outcomes, would have been completely and utterly misled”.
You didn’t have to be clairvoyant to foresee what I wrote with great detail in three Reflection Articles I published on the CubaDebate website between February 21 and March 3: “The NATO Plan Is to Occupy Libya,” “The Cynical Danse Macabre,” and “NATO’s Inevitable War”…
